Peter III
1728 – 1762 · 34 years · Saint Petersburg · Eastern Europe & Russia
Reign: 1762 – 1762 (Rus and Russia)
Grandson of Peter the Great, raised in Holstein. In six months he issued the Manifesto on the Freedom of the Nobility and made peace with Prussia; he was overthrown in a coup by his wife Catherine and soon killed at Ropsha.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 18th century
Portrait: Lucas Conrad Pfandzelt · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Voltaire — French Enlightenment writer, 34 years older
- Johann Sebastian Bach — German composer and organist, 43 years older
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — German poet and thinker, 21 years younger
- Carl Linnaeus — Swedish naturalist, 21 years older
- Louis XV — king under whom France lost Canada, 18 years older
- Frederick the Great — King of Prussia, 16 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Mikhail Lomonosov — Russian polymath, 17 years older
- Catherine the Great — Empress of Russia, 1 year younger
- Leonhard Euler — Swiss mathematician, 21 years older
- Elizabeth — empress who founded Moscow University, 19 years older
- Alexander Suvorov — Russian generalissimo, 2 years younger
- Mikhail Kutuzov — Russian field marshal, 17 years younger
Middle East
- Nader Shah — Shah of Iran and conqueror, 40 years older
- Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab — Islamic religious reformer, 25 years older
- Mustafa III — sultan who lost the war to Catherine II, 11 years older
- Abdul Hamid I — sultan of the Küçük Kaynarca peace and the loss of Crimea, 3 years older
- Osman III — sultan who spent 50 years in the 'cage', 29 years older
- Mahmud I — sultan who regained Belgrade by the 1739 peace, 32 years older
Asia
- Qianlong Emperor — Qing emperor of China, 17 years older
- Tokugawa Yoshimune — reforming shogun who allowed Western books, 44 years older
- Tipu Sultan — ruler of Mysore, 23 years younger
- Cao Xueqin — Chinese novelist, 13 years older
- Tokugawa Ieshige — ailing shogun whose speech only one courtier understood, 16 years older
- Tokugawa Ieharu — shogun of the Tanuma era and the Tenmei famine, 9 years younger
Americas
- Benjamin Franklin — American scientist and statesman, 22 years older
- George Washington — first President of the United States, 4 years younger
- Túpac Amaru II — leader of an Andean uprising, 10 years younger
- Thomas Jefferson — third President of the United States, 15 years younger
- Toussaint Louverture — leader of the Haitian Revolution, 15 years younger
- Aleijadinho — Brazilian sculptor and architect, 2 years younger
Oceania
- James Cook — British navigator, born the same year
- Tupaia — Tahitian navigator and priest, 3 years older
- Arthur Phillip — first Governor of New South Wales, 10 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- 1747 Ahmad Shah Durrani founds the Afghan state — aged 19, Middle East
- 1755 Lisbon earthquake — aged 27, Europe
- 1756–1763 Seven Years' War — aged 28, Europe
- 1757 Battle of Plassey — aged 29, Asia
- c. 1760 Start of the Industrial Revolution — aged 32, Europe
- 1762 Accession of Catherine the Great — aged 34, Eastern Europe & Russia